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Major Record Labels Keep 73% of Spotify Payouts
journovampire sends this report:
New record company figures out of France suggest that artists are being paid just 68 cents from every €9.99 monthly music streaming subscription – as major labels keep hold of 73% of payouts from the likes of Spotify. They’re followed by writers/publishers with a 16% share, and then artists – mostly paid by their labels – who get 11%.
mine, mine! ;)
11% of 9.99 would be 1.10 not 0.68
It's the 'artist' that signed a contract with the company, so he/she knows what he/she gets or doesn't get..
An artist working for a record company is nothing more than a regular employee..
Since when doing the work has entitled us to the earnings?
(stupid marxist ideas, tsk, tsk -- thought police is going to do something)
Music artists have often received little from broadcasting. Historically, they've received the bulk of their money from live performances and merchandise. Most of that broadcast money goes to the studios, the producers, the managers, the studio, the songwriter, agents and lawyers. Singers (if they're not also songwriters) usually come dead last.
My understanding is that many new artists have come to realize this scam and are starting to avoid the major labels, using alternate channels of distribution instead. It may not sell as much music, but they get a much larger slice of the pie
Wouldn't the "they already got paid for their work" crowd be fine with this kind of arrangement? That's what pirates always say, right? Not that I would agree, of course.
You wouldn't steal an an artist's royalties.
You wouldn't dodge taxes
You wouldn't install a rootkit on a customer's computerl
But the Record industry would.
And just to get the joke out of the way, "You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again!"
The spice girls weren't the only or the first, but one of the most clearly and well-executed "music group" concoctions (cynically) aimed at a specific demographic. This is but one example of entirely manufactured "popularity" with "artists" selected for marketability much moreso than voice or skill.
The smaller labels have a harder time doing this sort of thing, so if you'd like to see less of it, support artists on indie labels, preferrably because you like the music and they actually have skills as well as artistry to enrichen your life with. The big labels may be kings frog in the music pond, but the music pond isn't that big, so with enough indie support even the kings frog must come down a leaf.
In fact, apple could probably buy the big labels outright out of pocket change. There's plenty billionaires that could buy the labels and fire all the greedy exect. But they won't, of course. You don't get rich without being greedy, and why punish someone else for your own successful vices?
Spotify explain their revenue-model and payout-model here.
If a person performs a song to the public which he/she wrote, that person is a singer/songwriter, and earns the 'artist' reputation fairly
But if a person sings a song which was not written by him/her, that person is only a crooner --- Why are we attributing 'Art' to someone who sings?
Why?
Did you write that language you claim to be a programmer in, or are you just a user of that language? Why must we call someone a programmer when they didn't write the language? Why?
Point here is not everyone is a singer. Not everyone is a songwriter. But put those two together sometimes, and magic happens. They know this, and accept this partnership. Not sure why you can't, or want to get hung up on semantics...semantics that can easily be applied anywhere.
LOOOL! Is that supposed to be a joke? I haven't paid a dime for music since 1995, I guess. And now you don't even need any P2P software or "illegal" websites, you just go to youtube and listen to everything you want, and you don't watch ads if you have an adblock-like extension.
"Major labels keep hold of 73% of payouts from the likes of Spotify."
The 73/16/11 split is of what Spotify pays the label, not what Spotify charges the user.
The 11% is out of the amount that Spotify pays the label, not the 9.99 that Spotify charges the user.
In other news, huge corporations that produce software, despite earning billions, don't pay the developers any royalties at all. Are the developers going to give up their salary in return for a cut of the royalties? Start paying the corporation to use its desks and servers?
In the same way, are the musicians going to pay for that $10,000-a-day studio in the Caribbean where they spent a year they spent smoking ganja with the locals to produce their next masterpiece?
Captcha: prodigal
I thought this story was interesting, especially in light of the story a day or two ago about how there weren't any torrents for newly released music on TPB (with all the caveats that came with TFA). The barrier to entry for music production, or really, any kind of entertainment media, has been steadily dropping, to where the reproduction of the created content is almost effortless. Anyone can have a band in their garage and produce halfway decent sounding music, if they're willing to put the time and effort in to create something. A person can write and publish a novel electronically and do fairly well with it. The barrier to game production, in terms of financial outlays, is essentially gone. It's the same use of technology as a multiplier which enabled the information revolution in the first place, with the creation of the printing press. However, what all of those efforts don't have is a solid and pervasive marketing campaign behind them, and that's what a major artist for a major label is "buying" when they get a pittance out of their music being played someplace, or what a game studio or author gets when they are able to sign a deal with a publisher. Let's face it -- production costs are largely nil, but it's the ability to get the word out about something, and like them or hate them, this is what marketers do, and they don't work for cheap. I don't really see the situation going away -- they are a lot of people creating niche media, but there is still money to be made in mass market production. (yes, there are some things I haven't covered, such as the staggering cost of creating a movie or AAA game, and a need to make a profit on them, but I can paint with as broad a brush as I want on a comment board)
If they agreed a certain level of royalties from sales then that's what they'll get. If they sold the rights to the label outright, they'll get nothing at all. You can't make a contract then whine and bitch about it when you get exactly what you signed up to.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
To the machine.
Why does any sensible person support these assholes? I sure as hell don't!
Writers do not get "16%"...if you are very famous you might get 10%-15%, the rest gets 5%...and before the Internet came along, with traditional print, you had to invest yourself and mortgage your home to pay the cost of the 1st edition out of your own pocket. If it sold, well, you could keep up your 5%, if not you would lose your home.
I think when you consider these days how little the artist receives for their efforts. Its no wonder many fail to stay in the business very long. It also explains why many music artists eventually move on to other entertainment venues. When we see a Taylor Swift pulling content from Spotify this only proves that even successful artists feel cheated by the streaming services. I tend to agree, because so much of the artists work is ignored with streaming and people seem to have become hits buyers not artist buyers. Nobody really get's into a artists work, they get into a song or two. This reminds me of a Glenn Beck rant about seeing Billy Joel and how Beck was disappointed because Joel played other songs not so popular or were not hits. When I was growing up albums was the only real option for music, then came cassettes which did not replace albums but allowed for portability of music. Still, people bought albums not songs. Maybe what artist should do is ask for more money for songs not albums? So many other products are priced based on their popularity. Or maybe artists should just make songs and not albums. Release songs that ring popular with fans and charge more for them. It seems many songs on albums are ignored or don't want to be heard anyway. So why should the artist waste time producing them?
Except a mere performer isn't writing anything. Their contribution to the creative process is minimal.
They are not comparable to your average programmer.
They are more like someone that types in a program from a magazine.
The OP is rightly making an important distinction between actual artists and mere performers and you are trying to muddle it again with bad analogies.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't think the entire 9.99EUR goes to the labels for distirbution. Spotify needs to keep some of that in order to run their operations, and I can't imagine that's cheap.
Your "typing in a program from a magazine" analogy is completely flawed since two people typing in a program from a magazine will produce identical code. Two singers singing the same song will obviously not produce identical performances.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
> Except a mere performer isn't writing anything. Their contribution to the creative process is minimal.
Nonsense.
There is a difference between Elvis singing a standard, and you singing it. In the early 'pop music' shows, they would get the in-house band and singers to perform the hits of the day. When recorded music and Elvis came along, it became obvious that just reproducing the tune was not enough, the performance was everything.
According to the article, Spotify charges 2.08 Euro out of the 9.99.
They get as much penis as they want, in their choice of orifice as long as it's the ass! And they must like it like that, otherwise more of them would strike out on their own on the Internet and cut out the layers of parasitic middlemen between them and their listeners. Of course, then you don't have the vast marketing apparatus behind you and are relying on word of mouth to get around, but I'd be surprised if your garage band didn't get at least as much putting out an electronic tipjar on your youtube video as you would from a label, and way less penis. Well... you'd probably get takedown notices even if all your work was original, so there'd still be a fair amount of penis. Basically what I'm saying is you can't avoid penis in that industry.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
NoFX said it best live even
Go listen to karaoke night, then listen to a an artist sing. You'll figure it out.
The government provided several services for the composers and recording artists. Examples of such services include protecting them from foreign invasion, maintaining the roads on which their supplies arrive, subsidizing their health care, operating courts of law to enforce their copyrights, operating space exploration programs to provide raw material for space metaphors in the lyrics, and more.
Unless you can prove collusion between those 5 companies
You can find evidence of collusion from just the fact that they belong to the record industry trade group IFPI and its national affiliates such as BPI and RIAA.
Companies are allowed monopolies over their own products
So if I write a song, how can I tell whether my song is my own product or whether it's an accidental copy of a substantial portion of someone else's song (the "substantial similarity" test)?
I see two recorded performances of a piece of music as closer to two implementations of the same RFC or the same ISO standard. The code will not be identical.
In fact, apple could probably buy the big labels outright out of pocket change.
Under such a strategy, Apple Inc. would probably first have to buy Apple Corps from Yoko, Paul, Olivia, and Ringo, in order to fulfill its contractual obligation to Apple Corps. Since February 2007, Apple Inc. owns the name "Apple" in both fields but exclusively licenses it to Apple Corps for the fields in which Apple Corps was operating at that time.
What democgraphic? Stupid teenage girls? Teenage boys don't give a shit about Britney Spears or pop bands.
What about an artist that bypasses record labels and self-produces? Do they effectively get a bigger paycheck from Spotify, or is there some scheme in place to deprive artists of that revenue (like, 'we only pay X rate if the artist is signed with a record label') to discourage people from leaving the music cartels?
Reason I ask is b/c I made some music back in the day and while it wont ever top the charts, ive had a few friends compliment me on what I made, so I figure if I throw it up on spotify and promote everything myself, then I could get like, a few dollars a month in residuals or something.
The writers are also artists for a given work.
Publishers and labels? Not so much.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife